[ul]
[li]Ignored at least a half-dozen increasingly hair-on-fire PDBs about the likelihood of an al-Qaeda attack on the U.S.[/li][li]Was totally unready to help New Orleans after Katrina, resulting in ~1000 deaths due to flooding[/li][li]The Great Recession happened on his watch, and would have been a Depression if not for the Obama stimulus[/li][li]Disastrously invaded Iraq for no good reason, resulting in ~4000 American deaths and >100K Iraqi deaths (but nobody knows how many for sure because Bush wasn’t interested in such metrics)[/li][li]Iraq invasion put Afghanistan on the back burner, resulting in us being there for >15 years and another ~1000 American deaths[/li][li]Didn’t think killing bin Laden was important, despite his having killed ~3000 Americans, so Obama finally had to take him out[/li][li]And that’s just the high points.[/li][/ul]
Feel free to add to that sterling list of accomplishments! I can see why you think Obama didn’t come anywhere near to matching them.
Et voila, you have the Yosemite Sam analysis of the presidencies.
It is the cartoon analysis, does not matter if there is the compelte collapse of the american reputation, the starting of the war of aggression that wastes hundreds of billions of dollars, the huge debt.
No, it is the Yosemite Sam style that matters, which is the cartoon posturing and the childishing insult yelling.
The total cost of the war is actually projected to be over $6 trillion:
The U.S. war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest, a study released on Thursday said.
I bet he thinks the war was great, but the national debt is bad, and doesn’t understand why the two beliefs are in conflict.
That list is proof positive that you’ll believe anything that a right-winger tells you.
Even if you exclude matters of opinion – such as whether the ACA is a good thing or not – that list is full of verifiable lies. To touch on just a few, the author (as pointed out) doesn’t know the difference between deficits and debt, incorrectly claims there was no economic benefit to the stimulus, lies when he said Obama apologized to terrorists, NASA’s prime mission is not “Muslim outreach,” and so on.
Seriously, you and the author live in a universe where facts don’t matter. You are perfectly happy to lie through your teeth – with a smile on your face – as long as it serves your prejudice.
I enjoy having respectful disagreement with people with conservative points of view, but this fundamental dishonestly of both believing and repeating flat-out lies makes you a very, very bad American.
One of the first things Obama did when entering office was to stop the Bush practice of hiding costly things by not putting them on the Federal Budget. Y’know, little things like THE ENTIRE IRAQ WAR!
This is almost something you can say is a matter fo fact.
Under the Bush administration 575 American military deaths occurred in Afghanistan. Under the Obama administration more than three times that many American military deaths occurred in Afghanistan.
Further the Obama administration greatly expanded the use of drones, which were somewhat new during the Bush years. Indeed the first drone strike of Obama’s presidency occurred on January 23, 2009 a mere three days into his term of office. I wonder if any have yet occurred in Trump’s term.
Not surprisingly the death toll from drone strikes was much higher over Obama’s term than Bush’s given the greater number of drone strikes. At least the estimated civilian death toll per strike dropped under Obama, but still more civilians died overall due to the much greater raw number of drone strikes carried out. Many groups criticize the use of drones and cite resulting civilian casualties in their pleas to reign in their use.
This is not to say that Bush was any genius, but if we are going to spout statistics try to use real numbers.
TL;DR More American military and more civilians died in the Afghan theater under Obama than under Bush. A lot more.
If we’re comparing Obama and Trump, let’s compare eight years of ‘no-drama’ Obama with ‘nonstop drama’ Trump. Hell, we’ve had practically as much drama from Trump in the first three days of his Administration as we had from Obama in eight years.
I don’t know whether that’s a feature or a bug for Trump vis-a-vis his domestic political opposition. But I bet the rest of the world is laughing at us already - when they’re not horror-struck with the notion of this toddler in a 70 year old’s body playing an insanely large role in the world.
Despite the Guardian’s subheads, there’s nothing there to constitute “deity worship”. Much of the initial excitement about Obama was his repudiation of the previous eight years of “we’re America so fuck you” diplomacy. People were happy not just because of who he was, but because of who he wasn’t.
If that constitutes “deity worship” your bar for godhood is very, very low.
